OKLAHOMA CITY, Wednesday, June 6, 2018 – Throughout the last week, the Thunder recognized four students across Oklahoma who tallied the most reading minutes in their respective grade levels in this year’s Thunder Reading Challenge, presented by American Fidelity.
The winners in each of the four grade levels received a personalized plaque, a player-autographed basketball and other Thunder prizes.
Samuel Bauer of Tuttle Early Childhood Center in Tuttle won the kindergarten level, tallying 12,595 minutes of reading this school year.
Alex Oreski took home first-grade honors with his 36,788 minutes of reading. Alex attends Crosby Park Elementary in southwest Oklahoma.
The top overall winner for the Thunder Reading Challenge was Brailyn Hinesley, a second-grader at Earlsboro Elementary in Earlsboro. Her 42,365 minutes of reading topped this year’s program and won her school a back to school assembly scheduled for August.
The third-grade winner hails from Fairview Elementary in Oklahoma City. DaSiya Jones logged 37,470 minutes of reading.
The more than 51,000 students who participated in this year’s Thunder Reading Challenge totaled more than 33 million minutes of reading, which is equivalent to more than 23,279 days of reading. The program included 2,366 classrooms from 546 schools across the state of Oklahoma.
Photos of three of the four Thunder Reading Challenge winners can be found at the following link, please courtesy Zach Beeker, OKC Thunder Photos: https://bit.ly/2JjRlnn
ABOUT THE THUNDER READING CHALLENGE: The Thunder Reading Challenge is part of the Thunder Read to Achieve initiative, presented by American Fidelity Assurance Company. The program, which is open to kindergarten through third-grade classrooms, challenges young readers to develop good reading habits and a love of reading. Students track their minutes throughout the school year, and the Thunder honors top classroom readers every month and top overall winners at the end of the year.